2011 Hotan attack

2011 Hotan attack
Part of Xinjiang conflict
Location	Hotan, Xinjiang, China
Date	July 18, 2011 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. (UTC+08:00)
Target	Police, other civilians
Attack type	Invasion of police station, hostage crisis
Weapons	Molotov cocktails, grenades, knives
Deaths	18 (14 attackers, two security personnel, two hostages)
Non-fatal injuries	Four hostages
Perpetrators	East Turkestan Islamic Movement
Defenders	Nuerbage Street police station

The 2011 Hotan attack was a bomb-and-knife attack that occurred in Hotan, Xinjiang, China on July 18, 2011. According to witnesses, the assailants were a group of 18 young Uyghur men who opposed the local government's campaign against the full-face Islamic veil, which had grown popular among older Hotan women in 2009 but were also used in a series of violent crimes. The men occupied a police station on Nuerbage Street at noon, killing two security guards with knives and bombs and taking eight hostages. The attackers then yelled religious slogans, including ones associated with Jihadism, as they replaced the Chinese flag on top of a police station with another flag, the identity of which is disputed.

After a firefight with police around 1:30 p.m., 14 of the attackers were killed, and four were captured. Six of the hostages were rescued alive, while two were killed in the attack. Local and national governments said the attack was organized terrorism motivated by religious extremism, and found that two of the attackers have links to the militant East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). A team from China's counter-terrorism office was sent to Hotan to investigate the attack. ETIM acknowledged responsibility for the attack on September 8, as well as for the attacks in Kashgar later that same July. Six men were handed prison or death sentences for their involvement in both attacks later in September.

Hotan is a city of 360,000 people, 96% Uyghur and 3% Han, in Hotan Prefecture, China. Hotan Prefecture is a predominantly agricultural county and the poorest in Xinjiang, so it is a frequent source of migrant workers to wealthier Xinjiang cities like Ürümqi. Uyghurs tend to have less wealth than their Han counterparts; as a result, many Uyghurs are unemployed and subsist on Chinese social welfare benefits. The city receives few domestic tourists because of terrorism fears, but southern Xinjiang officials are trying to integrate the region into the international economy by creating a special economic zone in nearby Kashgar. Hotan had recently been celebrating the opening of the city's first passenger-train service in June.